Midwinter calling, day 15

Cheering up

I do not know if I will have time to finish it before Iselin returns, but the carpenters here on the island will make the frame for a classic Scandinavian foot-treadle floor loom snap locks on the wrap beam and cloth take up roll, hanging batten with adjustable position, adjustable tension on the thread and four treadles so it offers a lot of possibilities. They will also manufacture four different shuttles. I have a couple of different designs, and I simply don't know which one is best. I will make the reed myself from thin brass or something, and most likely it will be a better loom made in the future after they have to try to use the loom and can give their opinions about what they want, if something is a problem or just make adjustments for them. My plan is that those who want and have space will get their own loom, and considering how much they already weave etc, it wouldn't surprise me if there are three looms here next summer. At least Iselin and Kari have space in their own bedrooms, and then there are the spare rooms and also the attic. This prototype will probably be placed in the spare room across the hall from Kari's room on the second floor and the loom will be free for anyone to use. It's the first prototype, and weaving might not be noisy, bit there are some sound, and better that that room is used for something.

The need for round part for the radio parts has made me prioritize getting my new lathe 'finished'. It makes its first real brass chips, and I start to adjust it properly so that the lathe is straight and doesn't make conical cylinders, but before really making parts for the radios, I need to improve the parts in the lathe and make it better balanced and get rid of vibrations, and just improve parts and accessories. The roller bearings are the first to be improved. The bearings on the ship winch may have survived so far, but it hardly has a high speed or seen much use.

I have learned to keep most people out of the workshop when I do something that rotates, but I guess there are curious elves outside given the unusual sounds. Alith leans against the attic stairs at a safe distance away, and basically as far from the lathe as possible, but ready to defend me. Because the lathe might jump up and attack me or something. I have demonstrated the usual handle to connect or disconnect the line shaft system, and already put an emergency stop line above the floor as well. Everyone has also been warned about long hair and rotating machines, and almost everyone here has long hair. Jane will paint more warning signs for me. I've also only made 3 simple safety goggles, which also keeps people from the machines. Jane thinks I should do more steampunk like goggles, but I need airy eye protection that don't fog up all the time. I will probably still need to have two glasses I switch between when one starts to fog up. It has been a common solution so far in my life. Sweating and eye protection sucks, and the only really good solution so far is thermal lens goggles with a small fan sucking air up.

But the lathe works. This is a big day, because I'm pretty sure this is the first machine of this type and capacity in the world, and 100% Alfheimr. The lathe will only get better, and allow me to make better machines. The first true parts that are manufactured are bearing and shaft parts that are rounder, and in the future I want to replace that and more with even finer better parts in steel. I will fix the gears and other things, so it is possible to do finer work and make it possible to increase speed and machining speed, and increase the durability of the lathe as a whole.

Ciara seems pleased with her new assignment. Take a couple of books and count how many times each letter is repeated over many pages, for each letter in the alphabet. Just use a slate board and draw lines and then sum it up. Both for runes and for Laitje/Frigones letters, but on separate charts. I need to create a morse alphabet, so I need to know which runes and letters are most common here, not in English, and then customize morse for that. Not unexpectedly, Ciara is happy to do the job, without complaining that it is monotonous. The data will also be useful when I eventually build a printing press, or if I need to try and crack encrypted text and it is a bad crypto.

In the future, someone will have to count bigrams for Norse so I get some statistics on that as well. Bigram is two letters, any two at all, that follow one another. Written text has structure and peculiarities that are special to that particular language, and some such combinations are common. As an example, English has many bigrams like 'th', 'he', 'in', 'er', 'an', 're', 'nd', 'ea' etc. There are also trigrams which are common combinations of three letters, such as English 'the', which are found in common words such as the, there, their, they, them, then, other, together, northern, father, feather, weather, leather etc.

By analyzing the commonality of an encrypted text of two consecutive symbols, it is possible to get an indication of whether an encrypted text seem to contain correct sentences and structure, or it is random, and can be used to give clues to structure if it there is relocation steps, or how well encrypted it is. Bigrams and trigrams are a method to try to analyze the encrypted text, but nothing definitive, and finding a way to maximize the amount of bigrams does not provide the right decryption method. The problem here is that Norse don't really have what a modern human calls a structured language, and there are plenty of ways to spell something depending on dialect and skill. Frigones seems to be the most widespread and structured language in the nearest regions, so it should be important to analyze Frigonese. But then I need to learn Frigonese. Yuck. Laitje is bad enough, and I need to analyze Laitje too.

I have realised that if I continue to insist on using the Norse language and runes for all the books I primarily create, hold lessons in Norse and so on, then there is a decent chance that runes and the Norse language will become so much more important in scholarly circuits in the future. If I create colonies with Norse people, it will only make the language stronger and more important, especially as a commercial language. I can not say that it doesn't appeal to me even if runes are a bit annoying, and honestly a lot should be simplified. In any case, all this work keeps me quite well distracted from the fact that Iselin have been away for two weeks.

Argh. Damn. Until something makes me think about Iselin. Again.

I miss her.

I miss doing things with her. Discussing problems. Teaching Iselin things. Her wonderful smile when she understands something and comes to the right conclusions. Her face when she is playful and makes mischief. I miss seeing her come tipping on the toes, or her hair flying as she dances. I missing her presence. Miss feel her presence and to be able to hug her. I miss my adorable wonderful nerdy goddess. I look forward to calling her my wife. Look forward to having her with me for the rest of my life.

I'm depressed and just leave the work to go hug my pillow because Iselin is gone. I discover Jane seems to be even more depressed and unmotivated where she sits on a couch and just doodles, while half looking at Kari who sews. I sit down and watch what Jane doodles. Jane clearly feels lonely again, and just sadly and melancholy looks at me and just leans against my shoulder, and I put my arm around her. Most days are good, but sometimes it strikes her how isolated and different her life is now, and will be for the rest of her life. This is her new reality and future life. Some days it's just hard to accept reality, and I think Kari's questions about Midgård have made it worse again.

I decide to try to surprise Jane with something that can lift her spirit, so after a while I get up although Jane sighs that I do, and go to the kitchen. There I try to get Rikvi's and Jalida's help to make hamburgers. There is no tomato or ketchup, and dressing is a bit 'not really', but I've always avoided dressing in foods like burgers, kebabs or salads, so it's more for Jane's sake and something she can take if she likes it. But they manage to do some pretty good hamburgers like things, with freshly baked bread, good steaks, onions, acceptable cheese and a few vegetables from the garden. I've asked them to do enough for all the others in the house too, but I will have another movie night with Jane and eat in my room.

So while the food continues to be made, I find Jane and tell her she needs to be cheered up. So she will shower, change into Midgård clothes and we will have a movie day. I've arranged special food.

Twenty minutes later we are sitting in one of my bedroom couches, with the tablet on the table in front of us and the speaker connected, eating hamburgers that are perfectly okay while we watch 'Frequently asked questions about time travel'. Some parts give a little recognition to our own situation, but the movie is fun and Jane likes it. We sit and sing along to Bonnie Tyler's 'Total eclipse of the heart' when they sing it in the movie. We laugh at how they are in several places and meeting themselves, and even if some nerd humor transcends her knowledge, she likes the humor and that they are British guys in a pub. Jane suggest that this island should have a proper pub. Jane complain and say that she too liked Narnia when she was little, and even though the movies were okay, she just can not stand to see them nowadays. Jane sees definite similarities between me and the character Ray, even though I don't care about time travel, even though I half made one. Jane laugh while saying:

"See! I shouldn't be visiting another bloody dimension! I don't have everything pierced either!" Jane grins, elbows me and whispers: "Alith or Ciara... now they fit that description better."

Jane likes the short scenes after the credits, and approve of the film. This was a good idea and she thanks me for it. Both of our moods have improved, and we sit curled up on the couch next to each other. Just two friends eating hamburgers and watching a movie together. Jane start to poke and needle me to discuss my view on time travel, and how the characters in the movie could have changed their own history in a better way.

One thing leads to the other, and I tell Jane about the Swedish Christmas tradition with 'Kalle Anka och hans vänner (Donald Duck and friends)', which is quite uniquely Swedish. Since 1960, a small Christmas special with then already classic Disney films called 'From All of us to all of you', has been shown on Swedish television. It last one hour every, and is show on every 24th of December at 3 p.m. In the beginning, the content changed a bit, but the basis has now been the same since 1980, and in modern times, a short clip from a new Disney movie is usually added at the end. It is just tradition to see it, even though that is starting to disappear, but most activity just stops during that hour in Sweden. Start saying lines or sing a song from one of the clips and pretty much every Swede knows what it's about and can sing along. I wonder how many times it has been said 'rikta den där slangbellan åt ett annat håll' (point that pea shooter the other way) or 'oroa dig inte Sheriffen, hon är säker gamla bettan' (don't you worry none, Sheriff, the safety is on old betsy) just within the military. So I explain to Jane that there are very few Swedes who don't know how Robin Hood robbed Prince John, or how and where Sir Hiss sleeps. Or how Cinderella's dress was sewn by the mice, and how the dwarves in Snow White play music and what the musical instruments look like. Or the scene where Mowgli meets Baloo in The Jungle Book, and how Ferdinand's entrance to the bullring did not go so well, and how Lady and The Tramp's first date at Tony's went.

A new satellite channel - which most people couldn't see - bought the rights to 'From All of us to all of you' in the mid 90's, and thought they had made a smart move to attract viewers to the channel. It became a PR nightmare and it was almost warlike outrage and headlines in newspapers and television, and the channel back pedaled fast. The program is always in the top five list of most watched programs each year - no matter what happens in the world - and often tops the list. For many, it is when Christmas really begins when you as a family sit and watch the program together, then eat or have the Christmas gift give immediately afterwards. Jane finds everything incredibly entertaining.

There have been full combat kitted soldiers standing in line and singing the mice work song in Cinderella. I prove it by singing parts of Baloo's song for Mowgli followed by humming the music they play in Snow White and after Jane's teasing, I sing a part of the mice's work song from Cinderella - of course with a silly high artificial voice. You just have too. Jane has clamped hand over her mouth and is bursting with laughter but doesn't want to interrupt me.

I think it would be a fairly effective schibbolet to ask for phrases from the program to see if anyone is Swedish. You don't even have to take advantage of the fact that the 'sje' sound is uniquely Swedish and try to get someone to say the phrase 'Sjuttiosju sjösjuka sjömän sköttes av sju sköna sjuksköterskor på det sjunkande skeppet Shanghai' (Seventy-seven seasick sailors were taken care of by seven beautiful nurses on the sinking ship Shanghai).

When I try to teach Jane to say that, she completely mangles it - she knows it, but laughs. Teaching her to make a northern 'shhuup' sound for 'yes' is easier - they have all heard me do it. It's basically inhale while saying 'you', possibly with a slight shoulder jerk or slight backward nodding of the head.

We start to look through stuff on the tablet and I show her 'My bic is mighty', 'waiting for pizza' and more sketches by Stjepan Sejic, and say she has expectations to live up to, but her work is good enough, and I doubt he did anything with goose pen and iron gall ink. Actually, it wouldn't surprise me if he had - because he is after all an artist. I have built primitive stupid things in electronics when I really did not need it.

We look at a few of Stjepan Sejic other works, and Jane loves a lot of the humor and art even though she don't get it all, but she has seen many of the Marvel and DC movies. Sejic has got another fan, even though she thinks he often disproportionates bodies and she is quite critical. She loves some of the 'Frozen' references. I explain the 'Death by Snu Snu' meme and she laughingly agree it may be my biggest danger. Should that actually happen, Jane promises to make sure it is written on my tombstone. I transfer the pictures I have to Tom's mobile and also Death Vigil and Ravine and the PDFs, but I don't even mention the Sunstone catalog, and I'm happy I've sorted stuff by title and not author. I miss that I can't lend her my Sejic's books on the shelf at home, because a book is just nicer than reading from a mobile.

Over all it has been a good time and Jane is in a very good mood when Kari wonders if I'm free for further morse and radio lessons.